Tomasz Kocik, who has been jailed for life. CCTV footage showed him dragging a large suitcase half a mile from his home to the Grand Union canal towpath.
Photograph: PA

A man who beat his girlfriend, stuffed her into a suitcase and threw it into a canal has been jailed for a minimum of 18 and a half years.

Tomasz Kocik, 38, of Harlesden, north-west London, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of murdering Marta Ligman, 23. His victim may have been alive when Kocik was caught on CCTV dragging the suitcase from their flat to the Grand Union canal, the trial heard.

He set about a “determined” course of action to mislead her family, friends and police by using Ligman’s Facebook account to leave a false trail, the court was told. Ligman’s body was found 10 days later when the occupants of a houseboat spotted her dyed red hair streaming from the case after it collided with the hull.

Kocik, a forklift driver, claimed that he found Ligman dead at their flat after days of drug-taking. But the jury convicted him after deliberating for just over a day.

Marta Ligman. Houseboat occupants spotted her hair streaming out of a suitcase in the Grand Union canal. Photograph: PA

Jailing him for life with a minimum term of 18 years and six months, the judge Nicholas Hilliard QC said the evidence showed Ligman suffered a “severe beating” at Kocik’s hands.

Hilliard said: “Some time before 6am on 1 May this year you folded her up in a suitcase. She must have at least been unconscious. Dead or dying, you then treated her body in a grotesque and demeaning way, hauling her in a suitcase down to the canal and carrying a stick to try to submerge the case when you got there. Your actions were carefully considered and designed at all times to help you to get away with murder if you could.”

Ligman and Kocik met online in a dating chatroom while she was living with her family in Poland. She travelled to London in 2012 to live with Kocik, but by the time of her death the relationship had soured.

Tim Cray, prosecuting, told jurors that colleagues of Ligman, who worked in a delicatessen, described Kocik as an “obsessively jealous, controlling boyfriend” who was violent towards her.

The CCTV footage showed Kocik dragging a large dark suitcase half a mile from his home to the canal towpath early in the morning, and returning home with wet trousers more than an hour later.

Ligman’s Polish identity card and bank card were found burned and cut up by a member of the public along the route that Kocik had taken. Kocik failed to report his girlfriend missing until after the body had been found and the discovery had been in the news, the court heard.

A postmortem found injuries from a beating as well as hypothermia, and found that Ligman had not drowned. The pathologist could not rule out the possibility that Ligman could have been alive when she was put into the suitcase.